In the last month, someone posing as a member of First Baptist Church and Centenary United Methodist Church has ordered thousands of dollars worth of mobile phones from Sprint.

When the phones arrived at the doorstep of First Baptist, a perpetrator intercepted the package and got away with seven phones worth a total of $1,400, said Lt. R.K. Powell of the Smithfield Police Department. "Evidently, the person was waiting for them, so the church never got the phones, but they got the bill," Powell said.

Centenary United Methodist got to its package before the scammer did. Laurra Bowling, Centenary's secretary, opened the box and found smart phones that looked like Blackberries.

"I'm seeing Sprint phones and accessories, only we don't have Sprint," Bowling said. The package was addressed to a name similar to a church member's-- but not quite. When Bowling remembered that First Baptist had been the victim of a similar scam the week before, she knew what had happened.

The crime is identity theft. By giving basic information about both churches, the perpetrator convinced Sprint to send out the phones and bill the churches. Bowling said that whoever ordered the phones for Centenary didn't even give the correct tax ID number or the correct name of the church. Centenary isn't a Sprint customer, but the company still billed the church's address, she said.

Matt Sullivan, a spokesman for the company, said Sprint would make everything right. A corporate security team will get in touch with local law enforcement and the churches will not be billed, he said.

"In a case like this, we will make the customer whole," Sullivan said. "We're not going to allow our customers to be charged if it's a fraudulent charge. We will make sure that they're taken care of."

Bowling said Centenary had already gotten a hold on the charges. "You can only imagine how difficult it was to get it cleared up," she said.

Smithfield police are still searching for suspects and gathering information about the case, and Sprint representatives said they had been in touch with the Secret Service about the fraud.

Sullivan, of Sprint, said similar frauds do happen. "The individual may have provided enough information to place the order and that resulted in the delivery," he said.

Bowling said large churches can be particularly vulnerable to scams and fraud because they often have a heavy flow of visitors and deliveries. "It's terrible to grasp that it's going on, but people have to be really wise," she said. "It's identity theft, is what it is. You think you're safe in the church, and you're not."